UMaine Partners for World Health celebrating new campus space
The grand opening of the new on-campus home for the University of Maine Partners for World Health (PWH) club will be held Thursday, March 21 at 4 p.m. in the Keyo Building, where UMaine’s chapter is now located.
Student members will be present along with invited campus administrators, professors and representatives from the encompassing, Maine-based PWH nonprofit organization. The event is closed to the campus community due to limited space.
President of UMaine’s PWH chapter Michael Delorge will be presenting a speech alongside PWH founder Elizabeth McLellan, who will talk about how the organization was founded, how UMaine’s chapter started and the importance of UMaine’s chapter in the greater mission of PWH.
UMaine’s PWH chapter collects unused medical supplies from local health care providers, sorts them in an on-campus facility and sends them to the PWH headquarters in Portland. From there, the supplies are evaluated and sent to communities in need around the world, including those in Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Uganda, Senegal, Kenya and others. PWH also recycles “blue wrap,” which is used for sterile wrapping of surgical instruments in medical settings and is otherwise a nonrecyclable material. For the grand opening of new on-campus space, the UMaine chapter will use blue wrap as ribbon.
The student organization formerly moved from a church in Brewer to Murray Hall. Being on campus enabled the chapter to expand student engagement and involvement until it outgrew the basement space in Murray Hall. The new space in the Keyo Building will allow the chapter to utilize more volunteers and double its sorting capabilities.
“I’ve been in PWH at UMaine since the beginning of my freshman year and I’m grateful to help leave PWH better than I found it with this space,” said Delorge. “Very few UMaine clubs, if any, have their own space. We’re looking forward to what it will bring to our club and are excited to share it with our supporters.”
The university’s chapter is the oldest of approximately 10 within the PWH network and is the only chapter that sorts its own supplies. It was recently and tentatively awarded a $10,000 grant — the fourth in four years — by Projects for Peace through UMaine’s Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service to send four students on a medical mission trip to Senegal in the spring 2024.